10 Testing a Single Population Mean

10.11 Chapter Summary

Possible hypotheses with direction of extremes:

H0:μμ0 H0:μμ0 H0:μ=μ0
H1:μ<μ0 H1:μ>μ0 H1:μμ0
to the left to the right two-sided

Z -test on a single population mean:

  • The population X must be normally distributed, or the sample size n sufficiently large (n30).

  • The population standard deviation σ must be known.

  • The test-statistic is the z-score of the sample mean x¯, i.e., it is computed by

    z0=x¯-μ0σ/n,

    where μ0 is the hypothesized value given in H0.

  • The p-value is calculated as an area under the standard normal curve N(0,1) determined by z0. The Excel command

    𝙽𝙾𝚁𝙼.𝙳𝙸𝚂𝚃(𝚉𝟶,𝟶,𝟷,𝚃𝚁𝚄𝙴)

    can be used to compute this area, but remember that this command computes the area to the left of z0.

T -test on a single population mean:

  • The population X is normally distributed. (The T-Test is reliable if the population has a nearly normal distribution, or if the sample size is large and the distribution not too pathological.)

  • The test-statistic is the t-score of the sample mean x¯, i.e., it is computed by

    t0=x¯-μ0s/n,

    where μ0 is the hypothesized value given in H0.

  • The p-value is calculated as an area under a T-distribution with n-1 degrees of freedom, determined by t0. The Excel command

    𝚃.𝙳𝙸𝚂𝚃(𝚃𝟶,𝟶,𝟷,𝚃𝚁𝚄𝙴)

    can be used to compute this area, but remember that this command computes the area to the left of t0.